23 October 2012

"Horses and Bayonets": Leading Meme After 3rd Presidential Debate

First it was Big Bird. Then it was "Binders Full of Women." And now, "Horses and Bayonets" has emerged as the leading social media and internet meme after the third presidential debate.

President Obama's delicious reply was to Mitt Romney's canned remarks about the size of the Navy

ROMNEY: Our Navy is old — excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at under 285. We’re headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me.

OBAMA: The budget that we are talking about is not reducing our military spending. It is maintaining it. But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works.

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting slips. It’s what are our capabilities.

The reply "took off instantly" across the social media networks, reports the Associated Press.

On Twitter, the hashtag "horsesandbayonets" immediately began trending in the United States and became the top trend in the country and third worldwide, even an hour after the debate ended. On Facebook, users created more than 50 pages named "Horses and Bayonets." The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also pounced, posting a meme declaring "Obama just sank Romney's battleship" that generated more than 84,000 likes and was shared more than 16,000 times in an hour.

There is also a Tumblr but it's not nearly as LOLz or clever as the "Binders" meme. Watch the video clip AFTER THE JUMP ...